STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Since going live last August, the state's prescription drug database has handled more than 7 million requests from more than 66,000 health care professionals looking to make sure they're not handing out scripts to drug dealers and addicts, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.

Cuomo on Monday touted the number of requests processed by the state's I-STOP database, which gives physicians and pharmacists access to their patients' up-to-the-minute prescription history.

Those requests have translated into fewer instances of "doctor-shopping" -- patients going from doctor to doctor to get multiple prescriptions for the same drug -- the governor's office said.

In all, the state has seen a 74.9 percent decrease in people engaged in doctor shopping in the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to the same time period in 2012, Cuomo's office said.

"Prescription drug abuse is a nationwide epidemic, and with the I-STOP system New York state is showing tremendous success in cracking down on this problem," Cuomo said in a prepared statement.

The law requires that doctors look up patients' prescription history before handing out a prescription for restricted controlled substances, including powerful and addictive painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone.

By comparison, an earlier, less robust prescription monitoring database, handled roughly 500,000 requests from about 5,000 health care professionals over a three-and-a-half year period, according to Cuomo's office.

Up until recently, hydrocodone, which is used in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and Norco, was more loosely controlled than oxycodone, but a new law that went into effect last February changed it from a Schedule III to a Schedule II drug, which bars automatic refills.

According to Health Department data, the state saw 3,386,893 hydrocodone prescriptions in 2013 -- a 16 percent drop from the 4,038,714 written in 2012.

That's not the case for the painkiller oxycodone, though. According to the data, the state saw a slight increase in oxycodone prescriptions in 2013 -- 3,565,189 million, compared to 3,512,477 in 2012.